Golem XIV

[innate]

I am skimming through it, and a couple of things have caught my eye.

...you reached the limits of Einsteinian physics when Penrose and Hawking discovered that one cannot have, in the Cosmos, a physics deprived of singularity - i.e., a place where physics collapses.

Does anybody know any more about this?

Also, Golem claims that the human brain is at the limit of what can be done with protein. Do we have any reason to think this is true?

[Deckert]

I am skimming through it, and a couple of things have caught my eye.

Does anybody know any more about this?

Also, Golem claims that the human brain is at the limit of what can be done with protein. Do we have any reason to think this is true?

Where does your quote come from?

In answer to Your query:

Also, Golem claims that the human brain is at the limit of what can be done with protein. Do we have any reason to think this is true?

We don't. It's a speculation and nothing more. The brain is indeed limited by its physical construction. But I think Golem was in fact thinking 'bout Mind, didn't he? If I'm wrong please correct me... I read it a while ago and I really can be wrong about it.


CU
Deck

[innate]

I pasted the quote from a copy (English trans., of course) found on the web. Perhaps spacetime curvature becomes nonsense with black holes or something. I'm not strong in physics.

For brain and mind -- I wish I'd pasted in a good quote at the time, but here's one that I was able to find now without putting too much time into the search:

If you take the other path, refusing to abdicate Intelligence, you will have to relinquish yourselves - and not merely make your brain more efficient, since its horizon cannot be sufficiently enlarged. Evolution has played a dreary trick on you here: its reasoning prototype already stands at the limits of its constructional possibilities.

It's unfortunate that it's easy to discuss things that I don't agree with completely, but difficult to have anything much to say about the parts where I think he gets it exactly right.

[Terminus]

Hah, now that's quite nice that I can finally write 'bout something I really understand.
To singuarities then. Einstein, as we all know, authored the General Theory of Relativity, and sixty years later Hawking & Penrose showed that if Einstein's theory is true, than the universe must have begun once by explosion from a singularity. Meaning the big bang.
Einstein's theory is a milestone and considered the most true of all true ones , therefore it is a really hard nut to crack for people that were opposing the idea of singularities; as Hawking gave straight mathematical proof of his theory, leaving no backdoor for mistakes.

What singularities are? They are (theoretically) points in the universe, where the gravity is equal to infinity, and as such, all the laws of physics are useless there. As well as mathematical description, as mathematicians tend to avoid infty's where they see one:)
There is a popular theory stating that a singularity is placed in the center of each of them black holes, if You remember such things (those are collapsed stars).
A given star, if it is heavier than certain number (about 1.5 Sun's mass) is unable to equalize its own gravitation with thermonuclear energy radiated from its center. And so it collapses.

But after all I thing Golem is full of sh**, because it doesn't prove the uselessnes of phisics if one finds a singularity here or there. What's the big deal?

[innate]

Ah. Does the universe have to contain singularities at all times, or just at the beginning?

(It's hard for me to remember that Penrose did important things because I first heard of him with respect to his crazy idea about consciousness and quantum effects and microtubules...or however it went exactly...)

[Terminus]

Unfortunately, it is now believed that singularities exist all around - in centres of black holes, that yelds about 1,2 black holes per 10 galaxies. We own a supermassive black hole (that contains singularity) in the center of our Milky Way.

Also, nowadays a serious group of scientist believe that there may exist somethings like micro-singularities, that can appear and reappear from time to time. They are subquantum size, so there's no danger that one of them jumps out of nothingness in front of your car when you ride fast

[innate]

Well, good, as long as they stay safely tucked away where they can't give me any trouble...

[Terminus]

Buehehe, now that's the spirit !

As for the regular black holes - they produce weak gamma radiation (which is very interesting: they have gravity so enormous that even light cannot ecape from them, but they radiate ! But that's another long boring story with Hawking starring the main character (the radiation is called Hawking radiation - there's a reason to it)).

And there are satellites in our stary sky, such as Chandra, which investigate gamma radiation, and have found LARGE number of black holes:) So it's quite cool, when we're talking about singularities. There are some to talk about.

Which, of course, doesn't alter the fact of Golem being full of sh**.

[innate]

How does that work again? I remember something along the lines of a black hole's energy going into making particle pairs pop up, then having one of them get slurped up and the other, uh, wandering off or...something. And then something in the news not too long ago about how maybe they wouldn't evaporate after all because...umm...I can't remember why. I wonder if anything's supposed to happen to the singularity if the hole evaporates.
Free physics lessons, this is awesome....

[Deckert]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was told that those micro black holes are going to be recreated on Earth quite soon. I heard about alleged experiments on this field that will be led in CERN - the world's largest particle accelerator.

CU
Deck

[Terminus]

Yes, that's perfectly correct, guys from CERN have no idea what to do with their money, so here you are

And for innate yes, that's the point - two particles pop out of nowhere (it is called quantum fluctuation - first there is  nothing, then there appear two particles - for example electron and anti-electron (which makes the pair's energy 0 anyway)), and if such pair appears near to the blackish-holish so called "event horizon" (the limit of no escape from the hole) than they may get splitted and one of them is fired into universe (and second one falls onto the singularity, which means goodbye). There you have it - black holes radiate gamma rays out of nothing. This is not really radiation, as the particles don't orgigin from within the hole itself... but it's still production, isn't it.
Somewhat like Soviet Union was producing coal, when in fact it was stolen from Poland's Silesian region, where we saw loaded trains vanishing  somewhere towards the rising sun...

[Deckert]

There you have it - black holes radiate gamma rays out of nothing. This is not really radiation, as the particles don't orgigin from within the hole itself... but it's still production, isn't it.

Really? Are You sure? I remember I read something different in polish edition of American Scientific. Of course it might be, that it's me who's still wrong, 'coz I'm not into the subject. Nevertheless the article was saying that black-holes indeed give off energy as a side effect of a mass or object annihilation process in the singularity. Please correct me, 'coz now I got confused.

CU
Deck

[Terminus]

Well, I'm no physicist either. But just lets think about it. If BH give energy back - what form does the energy take to escape the inner region of event horizon?

I thought nothing can escape...

(As for the Hawking radiation, I heard recently that he himself  is opposing his own idea nowadays, but I don't know why).

[wetal]

Golem 14 was not a living thing that`s why he thought of humans judging by himself.
 Seeing no perspective he commited suicide in the end.Humans try immortalize themselves in tecnology but alas all in vain as machines will finally be out of order `cause nobody maintains them.
 Golem realized it clearly.
 

[innate]

Humans try to immortalize themselves in technology but alas all in vain as machines will finally be out of order `cause nobody maintains them.

That brings up a good point about limitations of construction, in that we will have to develop systems -- presumably borrowing heavily from biology -- that have the ability to repair or reconfigure themselves. For robustness we will sacrifice speed. I guess that generalizes to "we have to think in the long term, not just the short term", though, and we know that's not one of man's strengths.